Thursday, 25 November 2010

Bit of a shock at the Games Night as I was asked to GM a game of Battletech as Martin, the GM of the ongoing campaign, was bust elsewhere for the first part of the night.

My main worries was if there was any major differences between the more recent rulebooks and Martin's colection of classic material, and trying to study the mech sheets to work out optimum ranges and heat usages for the variety of Mechs. It's a lot harder than running a single one, and the old style mech sheets are not as helpful for weapon and heat info as the newer ones are.

Before going to his meeting Martin gave each player their own secret 'special' objective. Turns out at the end of the night most of these fall into the silly category, such as making sure the bases vile canteen gets destroyed.The space mercs hired by the government of the local planet of continue to advance upon the Lyran base, in what has now become a three way political situation. The encroaching asked the Lyrans to vacate the area or be removed by force. Naturally enough the characters, like the good Stenier puppets they are, decided to fight rather than give in and managed to get their Mechs quickly out of the base without standing on too many Nissen Huts.

An even tonnage fight, but with the being given flat piloting and gunnery to make my life easier, but with no bonus to initiative rolls. My 5 Mechs vs the 6 of the Lyrans, so the maneuver advantage should always be with the characters. An Atlas, 2 OSTROCS, Wolverine and another mech.

Both forces unusually closed rapidly upon each other, and most of the action was to occur upon the classic starter map rather than the built up map of the base. One of the Lyran Mechs broke the first rule of how not to be seen, and stood out in the open, for a number of my mechs to fire at it, at their optimum range. The others had wisely hid behind woodlands and hills to gain cover bonuses.

Both Mechs standing toe to toe had taken 20+ hits, the Lyran Mech now looking in a bad way. But it did manage it's piloting roll to remain upright, as opposed to the opposing Mech, which fell over and managed to land on it's head for 5 damage and knocking the pilot unconscious. Given the amount of heat it was venting this wasn't too critical, and the opposing Mechs, being in the most parts noble, refused to shoot a Mech when it's down inactive.

The medium Mechs then spent a few turns trading fire with each other, as a Lyran Light tried to work its way round to a flank position.

The Atlas was firing its load off and its heat level was slowly rising. A sneaky flamer from the opposition gave it two heat to push it into possible shutdown zone, but it made its roll ok. What it did not make was it's piloting roll for taking 20 damage from PPC and laser hits, and it, like its companion earlier, also toppled to the ground.

At this point Martin managed to get out of his meeting and retook control of the situation. Eventually the battle petered out to a stalemate as the damage on both sides mounted up.¶